Ng'arua Maarifa Centre was established by ALIN, to be used by the rural communities to access; free internet, E-government services, multimedia content, online market information, publications and library, advisory services and ICT trainings.

Pages

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Without women, African agriculture won't withstand climate change

By Sophie Huyer, CCAFS

The outcomes agreed at
the U.N. climate change summit in Paris, which will shape future policies, fell
short on a critical issue. Mentions of gender were mostly confined to how
climate change will impact women, and how they are considered “vulnerable populations”.

Discussions on how to
support women to actively address and participate in actions to reduce
planet-warming emissions and adapt to climate change impacts were largely absent.

A farmer from Nyando, Kenya inspects her crops.CCAFS/S.Kilungu

Agriculture in
sub-Saharan Africa stands to be one of the sectors worst hit by climate change
and is among the least prepared.

Given that 60 percent of
women in sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania and Southeast Asia are engaged in
agriculture, it stands to reason that they need to be crucial players in
equipping their countries for the extreme weather events they are already
witnessing - which are decreasing food production and livelihoods, and making
it more difficult for women to meet their daily needs.

New research out
this week from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and partners
predicts that sub-Saharan Africa will have to significantly transform around 30
percent of its agricultural areas by the end of the century to cope with
climate change.

That means switching to
improved or more resilient crops, or even moving out of crop-based agriculture
all together. The first of its kind to put a timeline on interventions that
must be made, the research exposes the need for some regions to have
transformed by as early as 2025.

But any meaningful
transformation is not likely to happen without the active engagement of women,
who take on a tremendous proportion of farm work. So how can we ensure they are
part of the process?

Involve women in seed
selection

Technologies introduced
to adapt to climate change need to suit women’s priorities. Feeding the family
is often their domain, so when introducing new crop varieties that will
withstand drought and heat, women want to know how these varieties will fit in with
their practices.

How long will they take
to cook? Will they taste the same? How easy is it to grind the yam or cassava?
How easy will it be to harvest the chickpeas? Arranging culinary tests with female farmers has been
shown to improve the uptake of these new varieties and should form a critical
part of the process. Women’s knowledge of crop breeding has also been used to
test a wider range of characteristics, such as disease-resistant coffee
varieties.

There’s a time and a
place for climate information

Making climate
information available to farmers is a critical phase of transformation.
Yet research has shown that women may want to receive
different kinds of climate and agricultural information in different places,
and at different times than men.

For example, a woman in
Senegal told me she prefers information by mobile phone rather than rural
radio, because she can bring her phone with her as she works in the field or
goes to fetch water. She then shares farming updates verbally with her
neighbours who do not have mobile phones.

In other situations,
women prefer receiving information by radio or through community-based
organisations, while men tend to receive information through more formal
channels.

Other Senegalese women we
interviewed said they wanted forecasts about the end of the rainy season, given
that they often plant later than men. Women also prefer information about
climate-smart methods that relate to their roles both on the farm and within
the household, such as post-harvest processing.

Welcome Message

You are on the Ngarua Maarifa Centre's Blog. This is a community based I.C.T hub, that gives the communities of Ng'arua a platform to express themselves. And share their Knowledge and experiences with the rest of the world.